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Friday, April 9, 2010

Life sentence plus 1700 years

A friend of mine just got a credit card statement. He has a balance of $2,175.57. The minimum payment due is $22.92

The helpful statement points out that if he makes only the minimum payment each month, and does not make any new purchases, his balance will be down to zero in just 1,757 years. If he lives long enough, at $22.92 per month, he would pay a total of about $346,650 -- about 160 times the current balance!

If, however, he pays $73 per month, he'll be paid off in just three years, and will save $344,022 over the amount that would be paid in 1,757 years.

I have three credit cards with a total balance of nearly $5,000. I decided to stop using them and to start paying them off. I started with the highest-interest card first. I will then work my way down to the low-interest ones.

After I've finished paying them all off, I plan to write a book detailing tactics and tricks I used to do it.

Books for authors at Amazon.com. Click on cover image.

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I use eBookit.com for much of my ebook formatting and distribution. The company has knowledgeable and responsive human beings who speak American English, they do great work, they do it fast at a reasonable price, and my money comes in every month. I could not be happier, and I am pleased to recommend the company.

Internet Hell

Do As I Say, Not As I Did. What I learned about life, too late. Click on image to order.

Funny and useful. Paperback and ebooks.

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Michael, redecorated on 4/15/11. Recently he has regrown his full beard and a few hairs on his head.

Who? What?

This blog is written and edited byMichael N. Marcus. He's a first-year baby boomer, a journalist, author, publisher, editor, blogger, advertising copywriter, critic, cynic, maven, gourmand, techie and amateur attorney.Michael's also president ofAbleComm,"the telecom department store." If you have a strange compulsion to know more about him, please CLICK.

I've been writing professionally for more than 40 years. My first book was published by Doubleday in 1976. Since 2008, I've owned a small publishing company, Silver Sands Books. Some recent and future books are shown above and below. Info is at the Silver Sands site. Printed and ebooks are available from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and other online and terrestrial booksellers. PDF ebooks are available at Lulu.com and elsewhere. Some cover designs shown may not be the final versions.

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Stories I'd Tell My Children (but maybe not until they're adults).Hilarious, poignant, bawdy. To meet readers' requests, now available as a hardcover, paperback, and e-book in formats for all e-readers, PC, Mac, smartphones. Just $4.99 (or less). Click on pic to order.

About my typing errors

I frequently criticize errors in books, and some readers have complained about my own lack of perfection. Even though I often go over my blog posts 10, 20, 30 or more times, they are not immune to errors. There is no excuse, but there are several reasons. (1) I'm getting old. (2) The spell checker in Blogger is terrible. (3) I have neither the time nor the budget to hire an editor for a daily blog, which I normally start writing at about 3:30 a.m. (4) Books and commercial websites (especially publishers' and authors' websites) should be held to a higher standard than daily blogs. (5) I'm getting old. Oh. Did I say that before?

To be published in 2016 (maybe): If You Want to be Happy as a clam, Eat Some Clams!